This is the most concise and eloquent summary of the situation I have seen, very well said!I agree that an open and honest assessment with multiple perspectives being represented like this is invaluable.
I think that this new camera may well be a living example of the boundaries traditional 35mm places on digital capture ... at least where the current state of sensor technology is concerned. It is also a demonstration of why MF is where to go to make that quantum leap forward in image quality .... and history repeats itself, again.
That crop from the H3D you posted is incredible, and really shows just how big the gap between DSLR and MF capture quality is... There were rumors early on that the 1Ds3 was going to be a MF DB killer --- clearly it is not even playing in the same league. I personally still see the 1Ds3 as an improvement to the 1Ds2, and it did get a host of nice features, but I doubt most pros would consider them mandatory; convenient but not necessary... It will be interesting to see how popular this camera actually is after the honeymoon is over.
,